McCormack To Run 50th Consecutive Manchester Road Race

Courtesy of Dennis McCormack

Dennis McCormack of West Hartford, who will run his 50th consecutive Manchester Road Race Thursday, was a captain of the Holy Cross cross country team, graduating in 1973.

Dennis McCormack of West Hartford, who will run his 50th consecutive Manchester Road Race Thursday, was a captain of the Holy Cross cross country team, graduating in 1973. (Courtesy of Dennis McCormack)

Dennis McCormack first started running the Manchester Road Race when he was 14. He was a freshman on the cross country team at East Catholic High School. He wore black Converse sneakers. It was 1965.

His family always went to watch the race, so he might have run it earlier but the age limit at the time was 14.

"That was the first time we'd ever run 5 miles," McCormack said. "We'd never raced 5 miles. The training back then, especially in my early days, was pretty negligible."

McCormack, who was born in Manchester and grew up in East Hartford, is now 63. A year ago, minus a kidney that doctors had removed a few weeks earlier due to cancer, he ran his 49th consecutive Manchester Road Race. On Thursday, he will become the third runner after Charley Robbins and Amby Burfoot to run 50 straight times at the Manchester Road Race, and the fourth runner overall (Charley Dyson of Storrs has run in more than 60, but not consecutively).

"To actually be in the same place for 50 years is remarkable just in itself," said Mike Cobb, one of the runners McCormack coached at Northwest Catholic High School who went to the Olympic marathon trials in 1988 and now runs with McCormack at Manchester every year. "We're all really pleased for him. It's quite an accomplishment."

Forecasters say 6 to 10 inches of snow is possible from Wednesday into early Thursday. Race organizers are crossing their...

McCormack, who is a lawyer in Hartford and now lives in West Hartford, started running at East Catholic because there weren't any other sports he really fit into.

"I was one of those kids who grew up not horribly athletic, always small, on the thin side," McCormack said. "I wasn't going to be a football player or much of a basketball player. Someone suggested I be a runner or wrestler."

He chose running. And on Thanksgiving, as a runner who had reached the age of 14, he decided to do the race with a few East Catholic teammates.

"The first year, I used to say there were 105 people and I finished 101st," he said. "Although somebody told me there were really 131. 'And I think you finished 126th.'"

He would go to the race and gaze longingly at the prize table, with its TVs and other awards reserved for the top 25 finishers. Some day, he wanted to be in the top 25.

McCormack worked hard in the next three years and a new coach, Dave Kelly, helped him reach his potential. He went to Holy Cross in Worcester to run, probably, he said, because 1967 Manchester Road Race winner Art Dulong went there.

His freshman year, he finally cracked the top 25. He won an ice bucket and some plastic glasses.

In 1971, he finished fourth.

"I remember sitting in class one day and I was making my bucket list for life," he said. "I wanted to finish in top 10 in the Manchester road race. I finished fourth that year."

It snowed that year.

"There was a good coating on the course," he said. "Off we went, as usual. Usually, the first half-mile, I would make sure I was with everybody. Then the talent would take over.

"I think I got to the bottom of the hill and realized I was in fourth. They weren't pulling away. What's going on?"

Every stride, he could have slipped and fallen. But he didn't. He finished behind Amby Burfoot, John Vitale and Terry Gallagher in 25:10.

"I wasn't racing Burfoot and Vitale, but everybody else I was," he said.

He finished in the top 25 twice more. He kept running the race, living close by as he coached and taught at Northwest Catholic and then coached at the University of Hartford, starting their cross country and track program, and then to law school.

McCormack has gathered a group of friends along the way to run with him. John Quinn, a lawyer whom he shares space with in Hartford, started running the race after a dare at a stag party. The next day, he stumbled down the stairs of his house on Maple Street and finished, he said, just before a police car came through, rounding up the last runners.

"It's almost cliché to say it's a tradition that has no bounds," Quinn said. "You are just drawn back to it every year. There have been times I start the race and I have such a feeling of love for the event, I tear up as I'm running down Main Street."

In 1988, McCormack ran the course with a broken leg; he thought it was a bone bruise but he had actually fractured his tibia.

Last year, McCormack was diagnosed with kidney cancer. At the end of October, he had a kidney removed through minimally invasive surgery. He was able to run on Thanksgiving.

But the cancer spread and McCormack has been undergoing chemotherapy. His second-to-last treatment is the day after Thanksgiving.

"I've been lucky," he said. "I feel good. Endurance-wise, it leaves a lot to be desired. I can't train much during chemo. I went on heavy duty chemo in September. We're optimistic."

Every year, he parks his car in the same place in the parking lot next to the Army-Navy Club. His friends know where to find him. This year, about 60 of them will be there, wearing orange shirts that say: "Manchester and McCormack" on the front and "50 years running …" on the back.